‘I can’t imagine living with my boyfriend’s kids’

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Whenever her boyfriend asks when they will move in together, Alexandra (36) makes up an excuse. It’s hard to tell him the real reason: that she finds his teenage sons insufferable.

“Last week was my birthday. The room was already full of visitors when my friend came in with his two sons. The boys grumbled what looked like “hey” from the hallway, then moved on to the guest room to play a game. They didn’t even congratulate me. At that point I really had to bite my tongue not to call them back and ask sarcastically if maybe they forgot something? Especially my mother, who really turned out to be a really nice step-grandmother, deserved at least to get a hand.

But raising them is not my job. It’s my friend Barry’s job. And he did nothing. Barry himself did drop by for hugs, congratulations and handshaking, but allowed his sons to be rude without any embarrassment. So all I could do was laugh a little stupidly and say more or less apologetically to the roomful of people, “Ah yes, teenagers.” I acted like it was the most normal thing in the world that these two lads, aged fourteen and twelve, didn’t even say hello to me. Though it didn’t surprise me either.

lax attitude

Ever since I’ve known the boys, their lax, disinterested attitude and passive behavior have really annoyed me. It may seem like I hate them, but I don’t. Basically they are both very friendly guys. If you talk to them one-on-one, they seem to be able to have a ‘normal’ conversation and when it comes to their stepbrother – my seven-year-old son Lewis – they do show empathy. They just lack education. Things like being polite, talking with two words and with an empty mouth are basic rules in my opinion. Make sure others are not bothered by you or your music and say hello and thank you when you get something.

I don’t want to pat myself on the back as a mother. I just as easily make mistakes and my son isn’t always the epitome of perfection, but in general I can take him anywhere without being a burden to the environment or perceived as a nuisance. My stepsons don’t care. They blatantly burp, do not respond to the request to wash their hands first before eating or to shower at all in the morning. They don’t thank me when they get a present from me, let alone when I put a cup of milk in front of them. And going out to dinner together is a disaster. They don’t look up or down from their phones and they don’t like anything other than a children’s menu anyway.

No parenting talent

I think my boyfriend is a treasure, but as an educator he doesn’t care. Certainly the combination with his ex-wife has not worked out too well. Everything is fine and therefore the children have no control. They eat what and when they want. They set their own bedtimes. There is no limit to gaming, they go on for hours. I’m concerned about that: Frank, the youngest is both overweight and often has headaches. I would love nothing more than for Frank to go out and play when he gets home from school instead of getting behind the steering wheel of his Playstation. Or eat a piece of cucumber instead of muesli cookies.

When the boys are with my boyfriend and I call in the evening to ask how their day was and what they ate, I always hear something from the junk food category. Barry doesn’t cook. He has saved more points at Thuisbezorgd.nl than many a business traveler frequent flyer miles. I have to bite my tongue every time he tells you what’s on the menu, not to preach that growing boys can’t live on tacos and pizza. I don’t, because those kinds of comments only create resentment between us. In the beginning, I openly questioned how many takeout menus Barry has on the fridge and I wanted to convince him of the usefulness of the Wheel of Five. But he always reacted so irritated and angry that I stopped.

I also know that Bas and Frank now don’t like anything other than fat bites. When they are with me, the veggies are fished out of the pasta sauce with a dirty face, the fruit smoothie set aside in the morning and they only eat the prawn crackers and satay when I make nasi. I don’t like that, but if their father accepts it, who am I to say anything about it? Even though I’ve just been in the kitchen for an hour to put a normal meal on the table.

The summer drink

Barry doesn’t see the antisocial behavior of his sons. He is mad about his children and waves away my cautious criticism. ‘John, I used to only like applesauce and look what I eat now’, or: ‘They are playful boys, not drilled monkeys’. Somehow I think he’s giving in a lot because he still feels guilty about the divorce. We started dating more than two years ago. We work at the same company, just in completely different departments.

The spark flew at a summer drink. At the time, Barry was still with Elle, his ex-wife. They were in the midst of couples therapy because things hadn’t been going well for years and they wanted to make one more serious attempt to save their marriage. Falling in love with a colleague is not convenient and certainly not conducive to a good outcome. I understand he feels guilty about that. I don’t think my part is right either. Even though Barry said he was completely done with his ex, he wasn’t honest about the couples therapy. I have been a kind of catalyst for the final failure. Fortunately, Elle is a very sensible woman who has never projected her anger on me and never makes a fuss. It’s a nice, hippie-like type. She’s a little chaotic, but super nice.

Live together

After the divorce, when Barry took co-parenting, the three of us got together for an evening and talked honestly about the future. Elle was immediately fine with the children coming over to my house. I have her phone number and vice versa, if there is anything I can always call her. I think that shows real class. In that regard, she is a wonderful mother who puts aside her own grief over the failure of the marriage to give her boys a happy childhood. Elle wouldn’t even be negative about Barry and I ever moving in together. She said with a smile: ‘Then I’m sure they’ll eat healthy too.’

Living together is something that Barry also desperately wants. When buying his house, he looked for the largest house within his budget, with at least four bedrooms. “One for our Lewis too,” he said beamingly as he shoved the purchase contract under my nose. Very sweet of course. Especially because Lewis’ biological father is completely out of the picture. When I discovered that I was pregnant, my ex literally fled to Curaçao. I’ve been sending messages with info about his son for seven years, but he shows zero interest.

That’s sad, but luckily Lewis doesn’t know any better. Lewis loves Barry. Not so strange of course, because Lewis also likes everything from Barry. Even playing football in the living room or having breakfast with chocolate custard.

Influence

But although I grant Lewis a daily father figure in his life and myself the idyllic little house-tree-beast picture, I can’t imagine actually living together. So that has everything to do with my stepsons. In addition to my own irritation, I’m also afraid of the boys’ bad influence on Lewis. I see how he looks up to his two stepbrothers. He thinks everything they do is crazy. I get that: when you’re seven, two big guys who play gory and aggressive games and make loud burps “broken tough.”

We are all together two weekends a month and then I almost explode with annoyance. That lazy and sloppy. Barry’s house is a pigsty. I clean up as much as possible and sometimes really feel like the maid. From four men, because my own son also acutely no longer brings his plate to the kitchen. I also notice that Lewis starts a big mouth more quickly in the first few days afterwards and whines about screen time. Something he hardly ever does. And then it crosses my mind again that Bas and Frank have to do with it.

Also read: Mother Maike: ‘This is what a holiday of a blended family looks like’

Their father’s new partner

The first year I was able to dismiss the cohabitation plans fairly easily. I didn’t think it was smart for all children to push a forced relocation down their throats. Confronting Barry’s boys indiscriminately with a divorce, a different house and a stepmother and stepbrother seemed to me to be fodder for years of psychologist visits. And for Lewis, after all these years, suddenly a man came over plus two brothers with whom he had to share attention. Get used to each other first. But that actually went smoother than expected. The boys haven’t had a hard day in that regard.

From our first meeting, they took Lewis to heart and acted normal to me. When Barry and I kiss we are urged to ‘do it on our own time’ and they say how disgusting they think it is, but otherwise they have no problem with me as

their father’s new partner. Also in that respect I have to give their mother all the credit for this. She doesn’t blame us, so her sons go along with it.

Specify your own place

Now that we are already two years later, nothing stands in the way of picking up my stuff and unpacking fifteen kilometers away. I think I could live with Barry just fine. In the weeks that the boys are with their mother, he already lives half with me. But Barry wants to go a step further. My apartment isn’t big enough for five people, so he keeps asking to move in with him. To build a love nest together, he begs. It is also advantageous: now we have two households, two mortgages.

But no, I keep saying, I don’t want to give up my own place, for fear that I will give up a bit of independence. I had to fight hard to build a good life, alone with my son. As much as I love Barry, my home is my safety net. Because I have already paid quite a bit on my mortgage, I only pay 300 euros in net monthly payments. As a result, I do not see the need to move from a financial point of view. We are always with Barry on weekends anyway. Then Lewis and I live in our super-deluxe country house. We have the best of both worlds, I always say with a smile. While I would really like nothing more. I see Barry as the love of my life. If he had been childless or had raised his sons better, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second about moving in together.

Lying

Barry is hopeful and thinks I’ll change my mind one of these days. Especially after sex he often throws the question at my feet: wouldn’t I love to be able to sleep together every night? Usually I try to reject him as lovingly as I can every time: “Oh dear honey, but we’ve got the rest of our lives.” Because I think it’s so mean of myself, I don’t tell Barry the real reason. It would also break my heart if someone said about my child that he was an uneducated monkey. Or a bad boy. And that his presence is so disturbing that he wouldn’t want to live with me for that reason.

Conversely, I can’t afford to tell him that his sons – because of his way of raising them – are the reason why I shouldn’t think about living together under one roof. And so I joke about independence and self-reliance and hope for better times in the future. Secretly I am already doing calculations: another six years and Frank will be eighteen and Bas twenty. Then the boys must be out of the house, right? Seems early enough to build that nest together.”

This article was previously published in Kek Mama.

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